Paul Lachance Of Brightly On The Future of The Internet of Things (IoT), And How It May Improve Our Health & Our Lives
An Interview With David Leichner
Learn that technology on its own may not produce much fruit. Study up on the best practices and methodologies and see where technology can help. Bad processes cannot be fixed with tech — they only go faster. Fix your processes then automate.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is beginning to become more mainstream. Millions of people use Fitbit health trackers, Nest smart thermostats, and Ring doorbell cameras, which are early examples of IoT. These are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the potential commercial applications of IoT. IoT has the potential to change the way cities are run, the way our healthcare is managed, the way our cars communicate, and the way our supply chains and manufacturing are utilized. But how exactly will IoT improve our lives? How can it improve our health? What are the new IoT technologies that we should expect to see around the corner? How does one create a successful career in the IoT industry? In this interview series, we are talking to business leaders who are incorporating IoT into their business or who are developing IoT applications, who can share stories and perspectives about the future of IoT. As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Paul Lachance.
Paul Lachance, Manufacturing Software Visionary/SaaS Software Company Consultant.
Life-long entrepreneur and company-builder with focus on industrial SaaS software (CMMS/EAM and related). I’ve organically, ethically and passionately grown and successfully sold 2 software companies. I am always learning and sharing my experiences to help others. My unique journey has taken me from micro-startup into the growth years, all the way to integrating and thriving within a large organization. I understand what it takes to successfully build a company from scratch, survive tough economies and markets, take advantage of opportunities, thrive and endure the acquisition process and successfully merge & integrate with a new home.
Read more at www.PGLachance.com
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started in the IoT industry?
I come from a family of entrepreneurs, which inspired me to start my first software company from my college dorm. Truthfully, I have never felt like a normal “9–5” worker and have always functioned like an entrepreneur and company builder, particularly in the SaaS, Industry 4.0 and IoT tech space. By taking this approach, I found my true passion in the manufacturing and industrial space. In fact, I have been working with IoT-type data long before it was called IoT.
My career philosophy, and where I’ve found success, has always been to think about the solution first. When I encounter a problem, I often think, “How can technology help?” IoT has shown amazing promise in creating solutions and has the potential to help us solve our most pressing challenges we have in operations. This is especially important given the transformative times we’re in across our economy, the supply chain, the changing and evolving workforce and others. Embracing technologies like IoT to create solutions will make and keep organizations strong. For example, take the supply chain. As we leverage IoT data coming from all aspects of the supply chain (consumers, distributors, manufacturers, weather, logistics, etc.) we can get better visibility and can utilize real-time data to streamline processes and ultimately shorten delivery times at all points. This improves and strengthens the supply chain.
I am more than just my professional life, though. I truly believe a balance of professional and personal life is important. I enjoy my career and I am determined to continue growing and developing my professional persona in a fun and rewarding way. I still study and consult on IoT and software, but I have been able to strike a balance of doing that with my personal endeavors. I am a father, a musician and a recently certified yoga instructor. I always seem to take on projects for fun. I recently wrote a children’s book titled, “Reese the Blind Dachshund,” which is based on a true story of my own dog. This book is a labor of love and I donate the profits to the nonprofit organization Guiding Eyes for the Blind.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
Growing successful software companies has been a labor of love but also a major education for me. Like all entrepreneurs, I have made many mistakes — but I prefer to call them “lessons” as I have hopefully “learned” from them. To me, what has been “most exciting” has been more than the awesome software products that my teams and I built, but rather using the knowledge, wisdom and lessons from those years as a software/company builder and parlay that into helping others. I have enjoyed moving from a CEO to a consultant. This can be for helping organizations like Brightly Software grow their IoT strategy, helping the investment community understand the trends in industrial cloud software/IoT operations or mentoring up-and-coming entrepreneurs.
Ok wonderful. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. Can you tell our readers about the most interesting IoT projects you are working on now?
IoT seems to permeate all projects I work on these days. You can’t be in the tech, consulting or software space without incorporating IoT because it’s a major source of data that organizations need to drive intelligent decisions. In the past, IoT was expensive, cumbersome and difficult to find a positive ROI. Now, the democratization and the reduced complexity of IoT allows nearly all organizations of any size to incorporate IoT into their operations.
As a recent example, Brightly’s IoT strategy includes incorporating easy-to-install, wireless, low-cost sensors anywhere operations are run: facilities, building, production lines, assets, etc. A good simple example is a commercial freezer. The IoT sensor can monitor temperature fluctuations, which alerts us humans to out-of-tolerance changes. This is securely done wirelessly, and with data stored in the cloud, we can easily monitor, track and flag changes. If an asset or a facility isn’t performing well, data from the IoT tells us humans automatically. This allows us to catch problems early so the minor problems don’t become major problems, thus saving both time and money. Not only does this extend the life and protect the actual freezer but preserves the valuable contents within.
All industrial revolutions start with technology innovations and shifts. The very first industrial revolution technology shift was steam-power and similar mechanization. Sounds simple today, but it changed the industrial world. Later revolutions utilized mass-production, electrical power, robots and computers. Today’s fourth industrial revolution has many technologies (3D printing, blockchain, AI/ML, etc.), but IoT is the posterchild. It’s changing the way we look at software to run our operations across manufacturing and facilities management. Utilizing IoT, operation teams can provide intelligent, data-driven predictive (and possibly prescriptive) analysis 24/7/365. The industry 4.0 and IoT paradigm shift will be critical for industrial organizations to understand and embrace. All industrial revolutions have these shifts, and those organizations that ignore the shifts reduce their chances of survival.
I’m amazed at how technology like IoT can be front and center in fixing the most critical challenges affecting manufacturers, from supply chain issues to labor force issues and more. IoT is becoming easier and cheaper to implement, allowing upstart younger organizations to have operational advantages. It also creates opportunity for established organizations to find new ways to improve operations and control costs. As with all industrial revolutions, the investment community is watching and investing heavily into these ground-breaking solutions.
How do you think this might change the world?
IoT will change the world by freeing people up to spend more time on creative projects and value-driving initiatives to benefit their teams and overall organization. One classic example was the introduction of ATMs. When I was in college, my bank on campus replaced several human bank tellers with rows of ATM cash machines. At the time, it felt like the bank-teller would be a job of the past. However, what happened was tellers were now able to focus on more creative, customer-facing tasks such as helping with customer service, promoting new bank services and others value-add services. Within a few years, there was a steady increase in the number of human bank-tellers. IoT will allow humans to stop manually spot-inspecting equipment and waiting and reacting to problems. That free time can be used for much more creative and productive tasks.
Keeping “Black Mirror” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks of this technology that people should think more deeply about?
I have an optimistic perspective on how technology can benefit us as a society; I don’t believe technology is the problem, but rather, how humans adapt to using the technology. There is absolutely no doubt: we must be cognizant of using technologies like AI (artificial intelligence) and IoT correctly. We humans require a combination of continuously improving technology that gets easier to use as well as ensuring we humans adapt to new technology socially, mentally and emotionally. It’s a process and rarely perfect, but we adapt. We are living this in real-time, watching the impact of social media. Again, I am optimistic, like all historical technology innovations, we will get there.
What are the three things that most excite you about the IoT industry? Why?
First, that everyone can take advantage of IoT, not just large and well-funded organizations. The democratization of technology allows everyone to use and benefit from IoT. Even beyond private enterprises, public organizations within the government and our nation’s schools can benefit from IoT. Brightly Software has simple-to-implement IoT solutions that can benefit organizations of all sizes and types, ushering intelligent and smarter operations.
Second, in maintenance and operations specifically, technology like IoT, artificial intelligence and machine learning are allowing the manufacturing industry to move away from reactive maintenance to predictive maintenance, marking a major shift. Predictive maintenance is where IoT shines, and when we combine IoT with more advanced AI and ML (machine learning), that’s where we get into prescriptive maintenance. By putting all three technologies together, organizations can analyze data to identify problems or patterns and use that data to inform the best course of action to address the problem.
Third, IoT provides insights into how organizations can grow and improve like never before. As a timely example, we’re seeing a mass exodus of people leaving the industry (retirements, the “great resignation,” etc.). This changing workforce means senior employees are leaving and their roles are being filled with younger talent who don’t have the same knowledge and experience. Technology can fill the gaps in knowledge, supporting younger workers as they implement, manage and operate technology.
What are the three things that concern you about the IoT industry? Can you explain? What can be done to address those concerns?
The “compression of time” we are experiencing related to technology innovations and changes is unprecedented. A simple example: the iPhone 6 was more than 32,000 times faster than the computers that put people on the moon in the 1960s. These democratized technologies allow upstart-competitors who embrace IoT and other industry 4.0 technologies will leapfrog well-established companies who do not adapt to these changing technology times. As a business, you can’t bury your head in the sand on this — you may not survive.
Another concern of mine is apathy within the industry when it comes to security challenges. With the rise of IoT and connected devices, we’re opening up our data and organizations overall to potential risks. There already have been, and there will be more, stories about cybersecurity hacks due to a lack of tech security. The main way to address this, I feel, is increasing awareness of security practices and taking security more seriously. Properly vet your technology (software and hardware) vendors and partners to ensure you’re receiving the highest level of security possible.
My last concern is that there are not enough qualified, technology-oriented people migrating to the industrial operations sectors. Software and tech firms still offer more alure to these folks. Fortunately, this is changing, but slowly. There are amazing creative and lucrative jobs for “techies” wanting to get into IoT and related tech in the industrial world.
Can you share with our readers a few of the exciting future applications of IoT that you have seen?
One of the future applications of IoT I’m excited about is digital twins, which is a living, breathing digital twin of a physical asset. Digital twins utilize IoT to analyze the same inputs and outputs as the physical asset the digital twin is modeled after. This can lead to amazing operational, maintenance, future design improvements, scale and other benefits. It is also far less expensive than working with physical assets.
Digital twins require a significant amount of IoT-type data, but it allows organizations to get closer to the concept of a “lights out” factory, which is the second more-futuristic application of IoT I am excited about. A “lights out” factory is one where we have fewer humans in the manufacturing process instead of relying on automated processes. No one likes to hear about technology replacing human-jobs, but if the previous industrial revolutions are an indicator, people migrate to better, more lucrative and fulfilling roles.
Can you help articulate to our readers a few of the ways that IoT can improve our health and improve our lives?
IoT will help reduce mundane, repetitive work and lead to more fulfilling careers in the manufacturing and industrial industries. This allows for the teams to take on more fulfilling, creative and growth-oriented tasks, which will lead to better job satisfaction, thus, improving our lives and health. Career opportunities around IoT are amazing. Software engineers and developers can now have a tech career in the manufacturing space with the use of IoT. Lucrative operational and technology roles have opened up. Manufacturing in the past may not have been an attractive industry for tech-minded people. This is completely changing.
My expertise is in product security, so I’m particularly passionate about this question. In today’s environment, hackers break into the software running IoT devices, for ransomware, to damage brands, or for other malicious purposes. Based on your experience, what should IoT manufacturing companies do to uncover vulnerabilities in the development process to safeguard their IoT products?
Today, many organizations still worry about physical security (locks on their front doors) versus digital security. That’s the wrong priority. Organizations must protect their operational technology (OT) and security — locking out would-be hackers. It is important for organizations vet their vendors and partners — anyone they work with — because they need a solid layer of security at all levels. Security breaches with manufacturers are on the rise. At Brightly, we make security front and center, and we recommend others do the same.
What are your “5 Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Career In The IoT Industry”?
Great question! Here’s my list:
- Always keep up with technology trends, especially as they will benefit your industry. Remember the “compression if time.” Things are changing faster than ever before. Read up on current events, industry trends and other factors influencing your industry. Typically, technology can help. Supply-chain challenges are a good example: IoT will eventually create more resilient and faster supply-chains.
- Understand the intersection of the digital and physical worlds. Solid operations, aided by software, requires data from the physical world through IoT. Many focus on one-side or the other. Understanding the intersection between the two is helpful.
- Learn that technology on its own may not produce much fruit. Study up on the best practices and methodologies and see where technology can help. Bad processes cannot be fixed with tech — they only go faster. Fix your processes then automate.
- Always approach technology from a standpoint of making work easier for the team, creating a safe environment and utilizing tech to control costs and drive profitability. IoT is an investment but can have amazing ROI.
- With Industry 4.0, people win, not robots. Understand, embrace and evangelize this fact.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
Communication is essential and the most important thing we can improve on as a society — I feel this deeply in my core. In my personal life I have long-ago learned that honest and open communication with my family, friends, neighbors and workmates make everything run smoother and more effective. We need more of this in the polarized world we live in. IoT is all about communication, in this case machine-to-people. IoT allows our assets, facilities and machines to tell us when they are not feeling well, so we help. IoT-communication improves efficiencies and productivity. Better communication of any and all types can make the world a better place.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-lachance-b1a98424/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/brightlysoftware
Thank you so much for the time you spent doing this interview. This was very inspirational, and we wish you continued success.
About The Interviewer: David Leichner is a veteran of the Israeli high-tech industry with significant experience in the areas of cyber and security, enterprise software and communications. At Cybellum, a leading provider of Product Security Lifecycle Management, David is responsible for creating and executing the marketing strategy and managing the global marketing team that forms the foundation for Cybellum’s product and market penetration. Prior to Cybellum, David was CMO at SQream and VP Sales and Marketing at endpoint protection vendor, Cynet. David is the Chairman of the Friends of Israel and Member of the Board of Trustees of the Jerusalem Technology College. He holds a BA in Information Systems Management and an MBA in International Business from the City University of New York.
